Alexandre
Dumas (pere)
General
Alexandre Dumas
General
Alexandre Dumas (fils)THE WORLD'S GREATEST ROMANCER (1802-1870) NATURE AT TIMES endows one man with the energy and gifts of so many other individuals combined that he soars above the average mortal as an eagle does the ostrich. While these prodigies move through life with scintillating ease, the others plod heavy-footed along, and are left with two alternatives: either to thrill in admiration or to rage in envy. To this type of a multitude of talents in a single body belongs Alexandre Dumas, pere, the greatest, the most prolific, the most jovial writer the world has ever known. Born wretchedly poor and almost friendless, Dumas educated himself to the point where he became the educator of tens of millions of human beings the world over. A self-trained writer, he produced more literature than anyone who ever lived, earning with his pen more than $ I 0 million in the currency of our day. And yet, he found time enough to win fame as a soldier, duelist, hypnotist, cook, gourmet, entertainer and bon vivant, champion of human rights, excavator of buried cities, and gallant. Dumas perhaps held the record of his day as a lover. He rose to such a conspicuous position in the eyes of the world that whatever he did was news and was heralded far and wide. Kind-hearted and lavish as nature herself, this extraordinary man gave away great sums of money; created a private pension system for those who had served him and his faithfully; built a castle in which he kept open house for the world; spent more millions than he earned . . . and left life as poor as he had started out. Dumas, pere, was the son of General Dumas, another extraordinary figure who rose from a sergeancy to the post of general-in- chief in the armies of France in twenty-two months. When his father died broken-hearted in 1806, following a quarrel with Napoleon, Dumas was only five. Madame Dumas gave him such education as her wretched means could afford. Deciding on a musical career for him, she placed him in charge of a violinist, but Dumas was so devoid of musical talent that after three years of study, he could hardly tune his instrument. As for mathematics, he was never able to get beyond the multiplication table. Indeed, his fondness for adventure and the open air prevented his taking serious interest in study of any sort. His mother finally decided that the priesthood would be the best career for him, and a near relative of hers offered to pay the expense involved. But on the morning he was to leave for the seminary, a girl cousin of his laughed so heartily at the idea of his becoming a priest that Dumas ran away to the woods and hid, staying there for days with his friends . . . the poachers. Despite his scholastic shortcomings, Dumas loved reading, and eagerly devoured every bit of printed matter he could lay his hands on. When not reading, he was out shooting rabbits or chatting with his poacher friends. His first job . . . that of messenger boy in a notary's office-gave him plenty of time for reading. One day, hearing that Hamlet was to be performed in a nearby town, he went to see it, coming away so thrilled that he proceeded to learn the entire role of Hamlet by heart. After this he tried his own hand as a playwright. His first play, The Mayor of Strassburg, met with some slight success. This encouraged him to write other plays. But he used so much of his employer's time at this that he was discharged. His elder cousin, Deviolane, who was always predicting that Dumas' absorption in literary work would make a vagabond of him in the end, took malicious satisfaction in what happened and called him an "idle scoundrel." Later, when Dumas published his first book, Nouvelles Contemporaines, and only four copies were sold after an outlay of several thousand francs, Deviolane's triumphant "I told you so" seemed justified. Dumas' next position was in another notary's office, where he worked for room and board. His employer was in the habit of spending weekends in Paris and a powerful longing came over him to go there too. From the monotonous provincial town to which poverty tied him, Paris looked like heaven. He made up his mind to go while his employer was away. But how to get to Paris on an empty purse? He settled the matter by going poaching, like Shakespeare. An excellent shot, Dumas killed enough birds and hares to get money for his fare. That visit to Paris opened his eyes to the fact that there was no future for him in a small town. Once more in Villers-Cotteret, there was the problem of getting enough money to return to Paris and pay his keep there until he found a way of earning a living. It was then that Lady Luck came to his rescue. One evening, while playing for drinks at a cafe, he won 600 glasses of absinthe. As he did not drink, he sold them and with the proceeds went to Paris. There he tried in vain to get help from several persons who had been indebted to his father. At last, thanks to his excellent handwriting, he obtained work as a copyist in the household of the Duke of Orleans, later King Louis-Philippe, at a salary of 1200 francs ($240) a year. In the meanwhile he was reading voraciously, particularly history and mythology. Then he wrote a comedy, La Chasse et L' Amour, which had considerable success in a small theatre. This was followed by others in a similar vein . . until one night he heard a woman spectator say, "This sort of thing will never keep the theatre going." He determined to do better, and wrote a play, Christine, which pleased the repertorial committee of the Theatre Francais, but was received with scorn by Picard, the leading comedian of the day. Picard, after glancing through it, sent for Dumas and asked him caustically whether he had any occupation other than that of writing. When Dumas ,said that he was a clerk, Picard snapped, "Go back to your desk, young man, and stay there." Dumas, thanking Picard sarcastically for his advice, immediately wrote another play, Henry Ill, which was readily accepted by the Theatre Francais, and rehearsals began. But as opening night approached, two misfortunes occurred. His beloved mother fell ill, and the duke discharged him for neglect of his work. Undaunted, Dumas decided to make the duke sorry for having discharged him and invited him to attend the premiere. The duke replied that he was giving a party that night and could not possibly be there. Undiscouraged, Dumas suggested that he bring the entire royal party to the play, but again the duke declined. Dumas, not to be beaten, then suggested that the duke advance his dinner by one hour and the theatre would postpone its opening for the same time. Persistence won out and the duke agreed to appear at the play with his guests. As for his mother's illness, Dumas divided his time between rehearsals and her bedside. On opening night, he discovered that he hadn't a clean collar and couldn't afford to buy one. He promptly cut one out of white cardboard and wore that. The play was an instant success. The audience clamored for the author, and Dumas, in his cardboard collar, came out and took his curtain calls. The next morning his name, hitherto unknown, was the talk of Paris. He hurried to his mother, followed by a train of porters carrying so many baskets of flowers that there was hardly place in her room for them. Dumas was paid a large sum for the rights to his play. Then he did two things characteristic of him. Seeking out his skeptical cousin, Deviolane, he flourished in his face the bank notes he had just received; then, going to a restaurant, he insured himself against supperless days by buying a meal ticket good for a year, on which the restaurant promptly failed. But the duke, took him back and gave him work that permitted him plenty of leisure. Only twenty-six, he was now one of the leading figures of the gay capital. He was admitted into the best circles, where his color was in his favor. Society gossiped abut his African passions and his tropical sensuousness. Dumas, quick to capitalize on the situation, lived the part. He wrote other plays, some fifty of them. But he was always in financial hot water as he spent money faster than it came in. When the public grew tired of his plays, he found himself swamped with debts. Then he took a long-planned step. He started writing historical novels. He would do for French history what Sir Walter Scott had done for Scottish history. Shortly after this he met Auguste Maquet, his lifelong collaborator. Taking a short sketch of Maquet's, Dumas breathed life into it and produced The Chevalier Harmenthal, which proved an instantaneous success. This was followed by his most famous works, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Black Tulip. The children of his brain who populated these books became so popular that they were discussed in cafes and salons as if they were living personages. Indeed, there were those who insisted that they were real. So great a sensation were his books that soon he was the most talked of man in France. Kings and princes sought his company. It was while touring Italy as the guest of Prince Napoleon that the idea of one of his most famous books, Monte Cristo, occurred to him. When his yacht arrived off Algiers he was given a royal salute of twenty-one guns. Dumas decided he needed his own theatre and opened one. The Historique. A queue formed at the box office the night before the opening, a thing hitherto unknown, and which proved profitable to street vendors, who sold food and bedding to the crowd. All the next day until the box office opened, there was feasting and merry-making on the sidewalk. For the next several years Dumas packed his theatre nightly. A giant in size, Dumas possessed exuberance and mental powers to match. For more than thirty years he wrote incessantly. snatching only some four hours of sleep nightly. One of his best books, Chevalier de Maison Rouge, was written on a wager. He made a bet that he could write it in seventy-two hours including time required for food and sleep. He finished it in sixty-six. And it was written in his very beautiful hand without erasures. His energy seemed inexhaustible. He lived at top speed, yet neither age nor high living' seemed to affect him. At the age of sixty he would come home after a whole night of entertainment and sit down to write, while his son, and others half his age, would go to bed. He wrote with the same impetuous ardor his father had shown in battle. He could not keep pace with the demand for his work. For each letter of the alphabet he wrote, he received one centime, or about half a dollar for a word of ten letters, a sum equal to several times the present rate. Each time he stopped to put on his shoe, it cost him $I00. He wrote and published and published more than 1200 books and plays, and about four times as many articles for the newspapers. His travel articles described Europe and North Africa to the world. As for adventures, he had so many that it is not possible to give even a brief description of them in a short sketch. He fought several duels in which he was invariably the victor. He took a leading part in the Revolution of 1830, going after the sorely-needed gunpowder at Soissons with the dash and daring of his most noted figure, d' Artagnan. In Italy he helped the Garibaldians in their fight for freedom against Austria, and then gave a large sum for the excavation of Pompeii, he himself directing the work. In short, he lived his characters. And while the people liked Dumas for his books, they liked him even more for himself. He radiated good humor and made people laugh wherever he went. Even when alone writing, he would laugh uproariously with the characters he was creating, splashing as joyously in the literary element as a bird in its bath. Of his gaiety, he wrote, "I carry it about with me wherever I go . . . I don't know why it is but it is so . . . an atmosphere of stir and life which has become proverbial." He was the life of every party . . . "always crazy, always excellent." No prominent festivity was considered complete without him. Once he appeared at a costume ball dressed as a greased pole. At dinner parties he appeared resplendent with rows of decorations bestowed upon him by foreign rulers. He knew the value of publicity and how to get himself talked about. He was the Barnum and the Hercules of literature in one. Other literary men envied this unschooled "upstart" who, at almost one bund, had leaped to the foremost place in the public eye. Balzac, the great novelist, always contemptuously referred to him as "the Negro. Others said that he was only a figurehead and that his collaborators did ; all the work. Dumas admitted that he had collaborators but "only as Napoleon had generals." A rival, hearing that he was going to write another book, said, "Monsieur Dumas, are you really going to write it novel this time?" "Oh yes," he laughed, "I have to this time. My valet wrote the last one but the scoundrel demanded so much that I had to discharge him." To another he gaily replied, "Oh me, I am only a trademark." His wit was equal to all occasions. Once, while in a theatre with a fellow playwright whose play was being acted, Dumas saw a man fast asleep and twitted his friend about it. The next night both were in the same theatre, and again they saw a man asleep. It was one of Dumas' plays this time. The playwright flung back, "Ah, Monsieur Dumas, I see your plays also send people to sleep." "Oh no," laughed Dumas, "that's the same fellow we saw last night. He hasn't waked yet." Dumas scorned all convention. He gave his fancy free rein and ,could be counted on to do the unexpected, a reason why his characters are so alive. Unlike his distinguished son, Dumas fils, the word "duty" did not exist for him. Once when the Duke de Chartres, as a preliminary to inviting him on a trip to Italy, asked him what were his arrangements for the winter he replied, "Arrangements? I never make any. I'm like a bird on the branch of a tree. If there is no wind I stay there. If a wind comes I open my wings and go wherever it takes me." Many of his doings were considered amazing even in liberal-minded France. Once at a royal dinner party, when irked by his stiff shirt, he tore open the collar and bared his massive chest. A distinguished lady once called on him to find three beautiful women, nude, draped about his table while he wrote. He married a beautiful actress, Ida Ferrier, in the French House of Lords with two noblemen as witnesses, for by birthright he was Marquis de la Pailleterie. His women friends were selected lavishly from the galaxy of beauties that swarmed around him like moths to a light. His friend Lamartine wrote him, "The world has sought perpetual motion, Dumas, you have done better; you've created perpetual amazement." His enemies, nearly all of them literally men, used his oddities to discredit him, but the masses considered him a privileged character. Whatever Dumas did they considered well done He scattered money about as the wind scatters the leaves of autumn. In his own words, "Whatever my hand grasps it holds tightly except money, which flows through it like water." He built a castle in the suburbs and called it Monte-Cristo. People whom Dumas never met would come in to spend the weekend. Once a friend asked to be introduced to a guest who was sitting near him at the table. "Introduce him?" asked Dumas laughingly. "Why, I have never met the gentleman myself." Monte-Cristo, built and maintained at a fabulous cost, probably did more than anything else to ruin Dumas financially. When the Revolution of 1848 brought about the collapse of the theatrical business, Dumas found himself bankrupt and was forced to flee to Brussels along with other refugees. His generous nature would not permit the prosecution of men who had wronged him, and he never sought to avenge himself against his enemies. When a subscription for a memorial to Balzac was taken up, he was the first contributor. When a man whom he had befriended swindled him out of a large sum of money and was being sought, Dumas declined to help the police. "The fellow," he said, "is a scoundrel but it is no business of mine to find a rope to find a rope to hang him with." When his negro valet, "Alexandre the Great," dressed himself in Dumas' finery and strutted along the boulevards posing as the great writer, Dumas got another valet, and calling Alexandre in, informed him that the new man was to wait on them both, and that his sole request was that he should not take the new valet on his walks. His valuables were never kept under lock and key. On his dressing table he kept a heap of gold coins to which anyone might have helped himself. His extraordinary good and forgiving nature is perhaps best illustrated by the following incident. One wintry night he returned home unexpectedly to find one of his best friends, Roger de Beauvoir, who had been one of the witnesses at his wedding, usurping his place in the family bed. Unclad, Roger de Beauvoir dashed out on Dumas' approach into the sitting room, which was unheated. Dumas, aware of everything, greeted his wife as if nothing had happened, and then sat down' to write while Roger de Beauvoir shivered and stifled his coughs as best he could in the cold room. Then Dumas, laughing heartily, opened the door and bade the frozen lover come in and be warmed. He fixed him comfortably in an armchair with blankets and then crawled into bed with his wife, but thinking that Roger was not comfortable enough, took him into the bed beside Madame Dumas. Next morning while she was still asleep Dumas said gaily, "Roger, shall we two old friends quarrel over a woman even though she is a lawful wife? That would be stupid." Extending his hand to his rival over his wife's belly, he added, "Let's be reconciled like the Romans of old over this public place." And he shook Roger's hand cordially. When one of his passing mistresses told him she was pregnant, he replied, "I am not so presumptuous as to believe myself the author of this miracle, but if he brings into this vale of tears a head of kinky hair I'll have to be convinced." Dumas never worried about his color, although many of his friends, particularly the English-speaking ones, were anxious to prove that he wasn't a Negro, but a quadroon. In his own memoirs Dumas tells how, when he drew his pistol on the commandant of Soissons, where he had gone to get powder for the rebels, the commandant's wife advised her husband to yield as the Negroes were attacking the place. Dumas said that he was puzzled at this for a long time, since he was the only Negro there. Later, however, he discovered that the woman had lived in Haiti and had witnessed a massacre of the whites by the blacks. Dumas had a little Negro page named Alexis of whom he was very fond. A friend of his had presented Alexis to him hidden in a huge basket of flowers. Colored Americans who visited France were cordially received by Dumas, among them the great Negro tragedian Ira Aldridge, to whom he gave a dinner at "Les Reservoirs," Versailles. Luckily for the world, Dumas was born in France and not in America, where he would have been circumscribed and might have used his genius in the struggle for elementary liberty like his notable Negro contemporary, Frederick Douglass. Dumas numbered among his friends and admirers most of the great men of his period, including Lamartine, Eugene Sue, de Musset, Rossini, Goethe, King Louis Phillippe, Pope Gregory XVI, Delacroix, St. Beuve, Chateaubriand, Heine, and Victor Hugo. Once Victor Hugo acted very spitefully toward him but Dumas promptly forgave him and later defended Hugo, which so touched Hugo that he wrote Dumas, "I love you more every day not alone because you are one of the brilliant lights of my century, but because you are one of its consolations." Heinrich Heine, on his death bed, had Dumas' novels read to him, and wrote Dumas, "Your first name and your last name are currency worth more than gold and silver." Toward the end, when Dumas' overworked brain began to weaken, he took an interest in cooking and became the most renowned chef of his time. None could equal him in preparing a hare, a chicken, a sole, or a sauce. Bouilhet, the poet, wrote Gustave Flaubert:
As late as 1931 the Paris daily L'Intransigeant asked its readers whom they considered the greatest gourmet of modern times. Dumas was named first, and King Leopold I of Belgium second. Innumerable are the anecdotes told about Dumas. When his beloved friend the Duke of Orleans died, Dumas, always with a sense of the dramatic, fell into the arms of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, crying, "Permit me to weep over a Bourbon in the arms of a Bonaparte." (The two were rival royal families.) When told that his novels were a violation of history, Dumas retorted, "It is permissible to rape history on condition that you have a child by her." When someone shouted at him, "Your father was black." Dumas flung back, "And my grandfather was a monkey." As the crowd roared, he added, "Now that I have amused you all with wit of a good quality, I must bid you good-day as I have work to do." In his declining years he was tenderly cared for by his son, who, also starting at the bottom of the ladder, made a fortune independently of his father. Dumas, fils, always saw to it that his father's vest pockets were filled with gold pieces as the old man had a horror of poverty towards the last. In 1870, at the age of sixty-eight, he died, his great fame suffering temporary eclipse in the genius of his son. At the unveiling of his statue in Place Malsherbes, Paris, Edmond About said:
"He was not France's; he was not Europe's; he was the world's!" said Victor Hugo. A journalist of the time said of him:
Michelet wrote, "A man? No, he is an element like an inextinguishable flame or a mighty American river." Lucas Dubreton in The Fourth Musketeer says of Dumas:
The fittest tribute one can pay Dumas is to repeat what Dumas said of Shakespeare. "Shakespeare," he said, "is the one who next to God has created the most." But for every character of Shakespeare's there are at least three of Dumas'. And his personages are just as real as Shakespeare's. Who, having once met d' Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, or Aramis; Abbe Faria, Cagliostro, Cardinal Richelieu, the Duke of Buckingham, My Lady of Windsor, Edmond Dantes, and a score of his other characters can ever forget them? Many of Dumas' most sincere admirers have found it necessary to apologize for, or to explain, his exuberance and his utter disregard of dogma and taboo . . . but for a man like this, no excuses are needed. Dumas, a truly free individual, such a one as most of us, deep down in our hearts, would like to be but cannot. Dumas opposed slavery and wrote a letter to the Bishop of Autun thanking him for his fight against it. He said, "There may even be relatives of mine who even now are forming part of the cargoes of slave vessels." One remark of Dumas' deserves special mention here. He said, "When I discovered that I was black I determined to so act that men should see beneath my skin." There was once considerable color prejudice in Paris because of the horrible war between blacks and whites in Haiti. Peerless, good-hearted colossus of brain and brawn, one can truly say of Dumas to all the world, "Here was a man! Whence comes such another?" REFERENCES
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